TH Forum Highlights: LED And CFL's Not Energy Efficient, Solutions for Vampires, Volunteers Wanted

1) In the forums reader David Doggett is posting about LED and CFL's possibly not being as green as one might think. "Consider a house in winter...the house has a number of incandescent lights, all turned on, totaling 1000 Watts with an efficiency of 15 lm/W. The question is: How much will the consumer save by converting to LED lights with equal light output but with 150 lm/W efficiency? The answer may surprise you because the answer is ZERO. Why zero? Because the waste heat from those light bulbs goes to heat the house. Installing more electrically efficient lights just transfers the heat load over to the electrical heating system." An interesting thought, considering in one room in our house (office) we have a halogen fixture that keeps the room quite toasty.

2) User SoCalSolar is striking up a discussion of vampire devices (electronics that enter standby mode and never actually turn off - thereby sucking phantom watts of power) saying, "it is even estimated that the stand-by power alone in the USA could power all of Australia! I have a simple idea... not rocket science: Require makers of specified products to have an alternative "off" switch. The "It's really 'OFF' switch". DVD players, home entertainment, mircowaves, ovens, yada yada yada... Since it is not reasonable to expect everyone to go to power strips to turn off their stuff - and frankly it is not always possible to do this easily anyway - perhaps giving the option of full off is a thought." My own $.02, more investment in capacitor technologies.

3) Finally, we are looking for some solid volunteers to help us grow and maintain our forums. We want active members to help moderate or drive conversation. There will be some great schwag and benefits for those who really shine, but most important is continuing to provide a place for discussion and solutions. If you are interested, drop me a line here.